Why Miss World? (1971)

The Competition Will Soon Be Over

We have been in the Miss World contest all our lives...

Judging ourselves as the judges judge us - living to please men -

Dividing other women up into safe friends and attractive rivals -

graded, degraded, humiliated.... We've seen through it.

Mecca are superpimps selling women's bodies to frustrated voyeurs until ageing businessmen jump young girls in dark alleys - but they're only small time pimps in our everyday prostitution: women's bodies used by businessmen to sell their garbage - legs selling stockings, corsets selling waists, cunts selling deodorants, Mary Quant selling sex... our sexuality has been taken away from us, turned into money for someone else, then returned deadened by anxiety.

Women watching... why are you here?

The man's making money out of us
We're not beautiful
or ugly
We're angry

The man's making money out of us

The first Miss World contest took place in 1951. It coincided with the festival of Britain, a centenary of the Great Exhibition, which celebrated the Nation's brave post-war recovery and demonstrated its continued technological inventiveness. Technological innovations are essential to capitalism. They stimulate production and thereby in crease profits:- provided that new markets are secured both at home and abroad.

At the Festival Hall on the South Bank leading manufacturers displayed up-to-date items of interest for international consumption, with the firm intention of putting Britain once more 'on the map'. On the North Bank, at the Lyceum, Mecca Ltd presented their new invention - an international beauty contest. The organiser, Eric Morley, lamented the fact that, "in those days some countries hadn't even heard of beauty contests". So of course, he congratulates the company bosses for "shrewdly anticipating the public appetite for such an event". The 'event' has made Mecca into a £20 million enterprise.

In the Miss World Story Morley tells how he 'made it', and, like most tales of entrepreneurial heroism, it's a matter of transforming petty thieving into respectable big business. Prior to the Miss World contest, Mecca ballrooms throughout the country had been running contests of the "outright" - that is, outdated type. Local girls paraded in bikinis, or stars and G-strings and were disqualified by the audience jeering at their "under-or over-weight statistics". (These contests were probably derivative of carnival culture, and as such at least had more vitality than the slick hence more insidious prefabrication of Miss World.)

The new brand of contestants, unlke those of the "outright" type , were seen as National Representatives selected in order to stand up to international competition. To start with Morley looks for what he calls "basic material": girls between 17 and 25, ideally 5ft 7.5 inches, 8 or 9 stone, waist 22-24 inches, hips 35- 36 inches, bust 36-37 inches, "no more no less", a lovely face, good teeth, plenty of hair and perfectly shaped legs from front and back - carefully checked for "such defects as slightly knocked knees". Then with the "basic material" plus the aid of cosmetics and a deportment school, he manufactures the "perfect product". It is a sound capital investment since overheads are low. First of all, raw material is practically free. Morely proudly affirms that he refuses to pay the girls travelling expenses, gives them only board and lodging and a small allowance. Secondly, labour, represented by performance, is unpaid except for the winners £2,500. Mecca makes up for this in the tong run since Miss World is obliged to sign a contract for future appeprances. The contestants were forced to make so many appearances that as early as 1952 they threatened to go on strike. Obviuosly this wasn't in the 'public interest' and the girls weren't even accorded the sparse dignity of union-style negotiations. Morley, giving himself a man-sized pat in the back for his expertise in 'human relations' settied, or rather pre-empted, the dispute by rushing out and buying each girl a teddy bear!

"Human relations" under capitalism means the art of exacting services from a subordinate without provoking a consequent sense of injustice. Applied to women "human relations" means exaggerated paternailsm or diluted chivalry. The first approach insists that women are like children and therefore respond to scolding or pampering. As Morley said of the dissident contestants' reactions to the teddy bear ploy "they are all sweetness and smiles again". The other approach senses the injustice of womens inferior social position but suggests that polite gestures are sufficient compensation. The Miss World contestants caricature the alienating effects of selling one's labour - they are literally engaged in selling 'themselves'.

Married women are banned from the contest, Morley explains "it might make a woman dissatisfied with her life as a housewife and mother... husbands ought to have their brains tested if they allow it." As for the contestants "reputation", this is ensured by chaperones who "rule the girls like Holloway prison warders". Respectability ulitmately has a class connotation, he continues

"this contest is no longer degrading because unlike the fifties when it was that sort of thing that girls of the so-called lower classes did... now we have daughters of some titled people, a number from wealthy families or of public school education".

There is no question of 'fixing' the contests, but to get the 'right' girls, you have to get the 'right' judges. They must look for more than a 'busty girl with a sweet face'. Competition is no longer with the girl round the corner, but with the girls in the sunsilk [shampoo] ad. Mecca make a substantial sum by selling the rights to televise the contest. This means that the entrant better be able to read a script, speak into the mike without stuttering, and generally look good on TV.

Over 27 million people watch the Miss World spectacle. They see racism carefully concealed behind the 'famil of nations' facade; Miss Grenada can become Miss World, making obliging remarks about British hospitality, and consequently pacify 2 million under-paid immigrant workers. A Miss White South Africa and a Miss Black South Africa make it possible to pretend, at least for an evening, that apartheid is not so definitive. Miss India, during her reign as Miss World, entertained American troops in Vietnam, and "received cheers in spite of being coloured and wearing a saree." (Bob Hope). This Miss Third World trend reflected the 'wind of change' - a view of the world as a happy family of united nations engaged in peaceful competition rather than violent confrontation. This ideology served to obscure the anti-imperialist struggles at home and abroad. In fact, post-war retention of foreign markets has meant that Britain has had to intervene in, or at least condone the repression of national liberation fronts in places like the West Indies, South Africa, India and the Arab Gulf - even today RAF planes are bombing the small villages of Dhofar held by the NLF.

Miss World viewers also see sexism masquerading as a celebration or a Venus de Milo (cameras zoom in on a copy of the famous Greek statue) the timeless heritage of antiquity, the symbol of transcendental beauty. However, Miss World beauty is far from transcendental, it is profoundly temporal, out of date in less than a year. At the same time the promotion and proliferation of the image through advertising persuades women to 'transcend' their 'basic material'. The consequence of this 'transcendance' is the expansion of the domestic market. For example by the mid-sixties, the annual expenditure for clothing and cosmetics had reached £174 million for the teenage group alone. At the same time 70% of all girls aged between 15 and 19 left school and only one in a thousand from working class families attended university. Women are not expected to 'achieve' anything and even if they want to there are few jobs that offer a real opportunity for promotion or economic security.

Beauty contests epitomise the traditional female road to success. For many women entering one is like doing the pools - a kind of magic individual solution to the 'economic problem' ...Mecca's economic problems aren't centred on subsistence but on accumulating profits from finals, heats, rights, ads, bingo, and bets. What's in it for the contestants? According to Morley, "the adventure and excitement of living for a few days in luxury hotels and travelling first class", with of course "the fringe benefits of marriage to wealthy or attractive men and memories worth treasuring forever". This is a scrap-book life of womens magazines, the condition of all women which is assumed to be innate and unalterable. As one journalist put it, "We were obliged to be realists about women... their concern is not with ideas or principles but with persons and things. Their main interest is their feminine role". Eric Morley underlines the limitations of this role and the farcical escape which it offers when he says that Miss World is "something of a cindarella". But now women are asking why she didn't seize the magic wand and save herself from running home in rags.

Twelve years old - I was beginning to become aware of myself as a woman - and of how my friends were becoming women. The badges and proof of womanhood were bras, makeup, stockings and boyfriends, and it was up to each one of us to adopt these badges as quickly and successfully as possible. I didn't like the idea at all at first, I hated the thought of having to change so radically, just in order to prove my womanhood. But gradually, more and more of my friends were wearing bras, having periods, going out with boys. Gradually I stopped resisting the ideas of womanhood - I didn't want to seem different, to be a freak. I started scanning the fashion magazines as avidly as my friends, started going to parties to flirt, grope and neck with guys, all the while slightly horrified at what I was doing to myself, feeling myself slowly becoming buried under layers and layers of 'femininity', finding myself becoming more and more passive.

The whole of my life seems the same - time after time, being afraid to be different or assert myself, my individuality and identity. I wanted to be the kind of woman that the ads., magazines, telly, etc. told me to be - tender charming, gay, attractive - men complimented me on being a good listener, 'sympathetic', 'tolerant', it made me feel warm inside to know that I was so good at being a woman.

At university, I heard about Women's Liberation and didn't like what I heard. It sounded as though W.L. was about women asserting themselves , having their own opinions, making their own decisions, independently of men. Horrible! I thought, impossibe, frightening.

The thought seemed to open up a big gaping hole which I was going to lost myself down if I didn't forget about those ideas immediately. But there remained a little question mark in my mind that became more and more impossible to ignore. It twisted and wriggled, glared like a neon sign and finally exploded...

I WAS ANGRY.

I COULD BE ANGRY.

I'd been conned
swindled out of knowing myself.

I'd believed that I was what the adman told me I was.

And oh, the relief of knowing that wasn't, didn't have to behave in the right ways any longer to prove that I was a success at being a woman. It opened up boundless possibilities. I started discovering that I liked women and started to trust some.

Miss World

This account was put together by several people who took part in the Miss World demonstration. It gives only a partial view of what happened and does not include the views of everyone involved.

The Miss World Competition is not an erotic exhibition; it is a public celebration of the traditional female road to success. The Albert Hall on the evening of November 20th, was miles away from the underground world of pornography. The atmosphere was emphatically respectable, enlivened by contrived attempts at 'glamour'. The conventionality of the girls' lives and the ordinariness of their aspirations: Miss Granada (Miss World) -

"Now I'm looking for the ideal man to marry"

- was the keynote of all the pre- and post- competition publicity. Their condition is the condition of all women, born to be defined by their physical attributes, born to give birth, or if born pretty, born lucky, a condition which makes it possible and acceptable within the bourgeois ethic , for girls to parade, silent and smiling, to be judged on the merits of their figures and faces.

(Bob Hope - "Pretty girls don't have those problems." i.e., the problems that plain girls have in finding a husband or making a successful career. W[omens] .L[iberation]. girls must be plain, because only plain girls would have an interest in attacking the system.)

Demonstrating against Miss World, Women's Liberation struck a blow against this narrow destiny, against the physical confines of the way women are seen and the way they fit into society. Most of all it was a blow against passivity, not only the enforced passivity of the girls on the stage , but the passivity that we all felt in ourselves. We were dominated while preparing for the demonstration by terror at what we were about to do - To take violent action, interrupting a carefully ordered spectacle, drawing attention to ourselves , inviting the hostility of thousands of people was something that we had all previously thought to be personally impossible for us, inhibited both by our conditioning as women, and our acceptance of bourgeois norms of correct behaviour. lt was a revolt against the safeness of our lives, the comfort of continual contact with like-minded people.

The fact of joining W.L. shows a level of awareness of women's condition. But it's also possible within the movement to become sheltered by the support and understanding of a group, and/or friends. In the Albert Hall we were back in the previous isolation of the outside world surrounded by people, men and women who were there to participate in the oppression of women. And who were outraged and bewildered by our challenge to it. The outside world is mystified, and consequently often hostile, but W.L. for that reason cannot fear communication with it. Women must be confident enough to challenge the distortion or indifference of the Press and transcend their own feelings of vulnerability.

The seating arrangements in the Albert Hall were completely different from what we had expected. For example, Sally and I found ourselves unexpectedly isolated on the other side of the hall from most of the others; we had only managed to fill the two extra seats at the last moment; Laura found herself downstairs, instead of upstairs. We had reduced our grandiose plans to the simplest strategy of aiming for the jury and the stage with the comic array of weapons with which we were armed. We got into the hall amazingly easily, we thought, what with Young Liberals' propaganda, the bomb scare, and strict security, that a group of unescorted girls would never be allowed in. Once seated, Sally and I realised that the hall itself wasn't nearly as vast as our heightened imaginations had led us to believe. Above all we saw how ludicrously accessible the stage was, and that our only possible plan could be to make for the stage.

Our feelings ranged from complicity with the audience - a mixture of people backing their own national candidates, to overdressed couples on a night out and the odd family outing - mixed with an intense feeling that we stood out, and that everyone was staring at us. The conspiratorial non-acknowledgement of each other in the ladies' and the intermission - silent solidarity. Mostly it was the feeling of being caged in, surrounded by superficially 'nice' but basically hostile thousands.

In the hall, Sally's and my conversation fluctuated wildly between frantically whispered consultations of mutual encouragement, and overloud comments about the show, the judges, the girls, anything 'ordinary', and unsuspicious. We tried our best to laugh at Bob Hope's jokes, in a pathetic attempt to feel one with the audience at last. But as joke after joke fell flat, we were even isolated in our effort at normality. Suddnely the signal which we had been waiting for so anxiously, came at the perfect moment. It was our robot-like response which surprised us most of all. When the moment came, it was easier to act than to consider; in the scuffle with the police it was anger and determination that prevailed. As I was lifted bodily out of the hall, three Miss Worlds came running up to me, a trio of sequined, perfumed visions, saying "Are you alright?" "Let her go". When the policeman explained we were from W.L. and demonstrating against them, I managed to say that we weren't against them, we were FOR them, but against Mecca and their exploitation of women. "Come on Miss Venezuela, we're on" and the trio disappeared down the corridor. Then I was dragged off, and taken to a room where, to my relief I saw that Sally and the two girls who gave the signal had already been detained.

How was it, with so many odds against us, that the demonstration was successful?

The spectacle is vulnerable. However intricately planned it is, a handful of people can disrupt it and cause chaos in a seemingly impenetrable organisation. The spectacle isn't prepared for anything other than passive spectators.

Bob Hope made more connections than we ever hoped to put across; his continual emphasis on Vietnam revealed the arrogance of imperialism behind the supposedly reassuring family of nations facade.

The Press, searching for sensations, turned a small demonstration into headline news. Let's leave the last words to Bob Hope:

"They said we were 'using' women. I always thought we were using them right. I don't want to change position with them. Why do they want to change position with me? I don't want to have babies, I'M TOO BUSY."

Women met from groups around London who had been thinking and talking about women's liberation for quite a while. There were differences and antagonism, a lot of tension - the only thing we were all agreed on was to stop the contest.

This is the spectacle millions of people were watching - the ponces, the pimps, the role players, acting out the sordid spectacle between them.

Bob Hope was too much to be able to take - two women gave the pre-arranged signal - a whistle - and the hall erupted.

Miss World Is A Man's World

THE SPECTACTLE SHATTERS AS
We threw smoke bombs, flour, stink bombs, leaflets, blew whistles, waved rattles - Bob Hope freaked out, ran off the stage. We got thrown out by Mecca bouncers: Sally was arrested for assault (stubbing her cigarette out on a police-pig). Jenny was done for an offensive weapon (a children's smoke bomb). Some went on to the Cafe de Paris where the Miss Worlds were having dinner - two more arrests - Jo and Kate for throwing flour and rotten tomatoes at the Mecca pimps. Maia was arrested for abusive language (telling a pig to fuck off) - her charge was dismissed early on in the case.

AFTER THE BAIL WAS OVER

After that, for a few of us, came the decision as to whether we were going to defend ourselves in court and explain in that way why we had demonstrated and what we were fighting. I was coming face to face with the law and it looked this...

I was scared - scared to assert myself in the face of the law of the land. Why shouldn't I try and get off with a light sentence? Admit I was guilty. A lawyer could defend me better than myself.

We each reacted differently to thinking of the trial

Small charges - first offences. Easy way out - play it straight, get a lawyer (employ an expert to represent me and say it better (what, Why?) implying - get it over with...) Plead GUILTY... Why?

Because that's a whole contradiction to a whole action which was Joyful... So what's the point of adopting a new clean-clothed, safe, tamed, timid, intimidating Woman Image, if It means standing in a public dock box and mouthing the words ... "I am guilty, of insulting behaviour". It's not true, and saying we caused a breach of the Peace (insulting whom and whose peace are we breaching?).

DEFEND, WHAT? What are we defending?

QUESTIONS, in my nerves are lit, Yet you know there is no answer yet. Questions, Questions, are forming all the time... What are we defending? We will be on trial. What for? Individual acts or Womens Liberation?

DEFEND

All our lives we had been letting other people defend us, speak for us, lead us, apologise for us. This was a chance to change that, TO SPEAK FOR OURSELVES, break through our passivity and, that led to challenging to the role that lawyers played, in society.

Experts, well-oiled in legal jargon, ready to defend any persons acts against the system, but never to step over that line and challenge the basis of the Law. This was confirmed by various lawyers reactions - like, a Woman Barrister saying "I can defend Women's Liberation, but not YOUR actions."

And "Be prepared for a psychiatric report."

And another "Just think of me as a mechanic with a garage of legal information" - OUT of the garage and INTO the Streets we chorused to him.

And Wornens' Liberation Workshop said that this is the first trial since the suffragettes. You'll not be articulate or confident - you'll be smashed - and We don't want martyrs.

SO WE BEGAN TO THINK WHAT DO WE WANT OUT OF THE TRIAL. AND WHO ARE WE?

AND by thinking of ways of challenging we begin to feel confidence from working together, knowing that we can emerge from Conditioned Responses, remembering the joy and strength of that togetherness feeling in the Albert Hall, jumping from the seats, racing down the aisles , shattering the Spectacle of BEAUTY and saying What the fuck is this all. about. What is happening to Woman?

AND REALISING how a scream can be a public event - meaning let's make public, let it out, the stifling feelings, keep no more, making secret safe silent shameful ... private, let's change challenge, bring into the open, expose, abolish... the Private, privates, Property. Screams. War-cries ... becoming weapons that mean transforming the guilt-defences - passivity - soft - inexpressed sacrificial thoughts that are STATIC.

AND REMEMBERING in the court room the first time we came up (to be remanded on bail) the emphasis on being and keeping silence... THE PEACE... acceptance, restraint, order, suppress, pain, tears, pills , tranquilizers, sleep, peace, calm, soft PASSIVITY... KEEP calm, accept society, and SILENCE IN COURT... the lawyer will speak, the magistrate will answer ... the Soft Process continues... knowing, that the "common prostitutes" we spent the night with the in the cells when we were remanded, will follow us and plead 'guilty' - because it's easier - the policeman said so, so why bother to question what 'guilty' or words, or 'justice' means... 'just get it over with quick love'.

AND REMEMBERING AND REALISING... I wanted to scream, make some sound, some Human NOISE to shatter the silent static procedure, the soft mysterious process that envelops...
"werenotgonnatakeit... We're not gonna TAKE it."

Suddenly the roaring horror of my own passivity hit me in the face. The years and years of lack of faith in myself were all rearing their ugly faces and jeering at me - you, defend yourself! they said - you must be joking! Who do you think is going to take someone like you seriously. You'll be smashed and spat upon, you won't even be able to open your mouth to say a thing in court, you'll be scared.

That's right, I thought, that's myself speaking after all. but the only trouble was that that was the part of myself I didn't like at all. It was the part of myself that was always making excuses for myself, always backing out of things, hiding behind an image of helplessness and lack of confidence. I didn't want to be like that. I wanted to escape from all that, throw it away and I knew that the only way I was going to do that was by defying it and saying 'no, I'm not like that. I can stand up in that court and speak for myself along with the other women, and fighting the weakness I feel in myself.'

These were our thoughts, fears and hopes,
that we went through before the trial.
And it was getting clearer that:

We wanted to go further than defending ourselves

We wanted to ATTACK;

- the law that had arrested us, the court that was sentencing us, and show how it was part of a system based on the protection of private property interests.

We wanted to

- break down the structure of the court itself and the isolation of being on a trial as an individual, feeling intimidated by the Court, the Law, the Science, the Mystery.

THAT MEANT... challenging the court at every point.

- by speaking to each other in our own language that would be understanable by anyone.

- by speaking to our witnesses ourselves, as they were the women we demonstrated with,

- and explaining that way why we wanted to stop the contest.

- by using the court to talk to other women and to CREATE a space in the court. HOW?

What happened in court

We started the trial

1. By trying to make the actual courtroom less formal - by demanding the right to have friends as legal advisors (for the three of us without lawyers). We found a previous case (McKenzie v. McKenzie) gave a precedent for this ; which meant sitting with friends, instead of sitting alone in the dock.
2. We requested for our 4 cases to be heard together.
3. We started by pleading "not guilty" - "we've been guilty all our lives as women and we won't plead guilty any more".
4. We challenged the Bench and the Magistrate explaining that as they had a "vested and pecuniary interest in the verdict" (ie paid male) they had no right to judge us. For a man shall not be judge in his own cause.

So we did it, and the reality was a tremendous feeling of exhilaration and joy. We were fighting back on our own terms, refusing to be humbled by the court, laughing in it's face, feeling tremendous confidence and trust in each other.

They spun it out over 5 days, with as much as a month and a half in between, but in spite of that, the confidence of the women on trial built up and up until the court was being held on our terms - we were beginning to say what we wanted to and learning and showing what justice is - a farce.

The Magistrate was patronising and stifling. He became Daddy , dispensing wisdom to his naughty but intelligent daughters. So we ignore him effectively by continuing to talk to each other and our witnesses about our lives. — "What do you think of the magistrate?" we ask, "He is irrelevant". Finally his patience gets thin... BECAUSE...

DADDY IS NOT FAIR OR HONEST... HE IS ANGRY.

The Sick comedy turns really sour as the power is turned on. Witnesses were dragged out of the witness box. On the last day-but-one, three women (all of them witnesses) were illegally detained outside the courtroom by Special Branch and CID filth.

But the show goes on ... Justice must be SEEN to be DONE

When Jo (six months pregnant) tried to leave the courtroom to get a lawyer for the three women, she was thrown to the ground by six pigs. In the fight that followed, one woman was arrested for assault, and the three were dragged-off without being arrested or charged, and held in Barnet police station for 9 hours before they were released. They were interrogated about the bombing at the house of Robert Carr on January 12th, the bombing of the BBC van the night before the Miss World Contest, their politics, their friends, their kids ("who does he belong to anyway?"), their sexuality ("you're butch aren't you?").

The four defendants spent that night in Holloway, and were interrogated about the bombing the next day before they appeared in court.

"I felt that the event symbolised my daily exploitation. I saw the contestants being judged my men, and I know what it feels like to be judged and scrutinised evey day when I am just walking down the street. I saw women being forced to compete with each other and being judged by men. I felt for them. I had no intention of hurting them or attacking them in any way.

We did not throw anything on to the stage when the contestants were there. We threw missiles on the stage when Bob Hope was speaking.

In the same way, we threw nothing when the Miss World contestants were going into Cafe de Paris. This was a conscious decision. We regard these contestants as unfortunate victims of the male capitalist system.

This system that makes money by persuading women to buy goods such as false eyelashes. We are sick of allthis line about beauty. We are not beautiful and we are not ugly. It is a big capitalist con."

They were scared - not surprisingly - they were told that they would have to go up to Barnet for further questioning as soon as the trial was over. That fact hung over them as the magistrate refused to allow them any more witnesses, and finished the case in 2 hours. The 'star' witness, Morley, the Chairman of Mecca and the brains behind the contest, was conveniently refused as a witness. The defendants weren't allowed to put their case. The court was packed with pigs as usual, and only 15 people (including 6 special branch who had been there every day) were allowed in the Public Gallery. Justice was seen to be done Also as usual, Nina Stanger, the lawyer defending one of the women was completely ignored, treated like sht, and in general put down by Rhees. Women lose out in every situation but few areas are so obviously as man's world as the courts. Legal games depend on ego battles, and Nina didn't stand a chance against Daddy Rhees. The defendants were allowed two minutes to sum up. The fines came to £80, and each woman was bound over to keep the peace for two years or forfeit £100.

AFTER

IN HOLLOWAY, I see that the M.W.C. [Miss World Contest] was but a drop in the ocean of Capitalism's mess - a sordid Spectacle saying, Look-but don't-touch, Stimulate-but-can' t-have, Provoke-but-don't protest.

Exposing it because we related to it was the beginning of a rejection of our culturally privileged positions. But freaking-out at the phoney glamour of this sort of Spectacle is only a start, because it's still a limited and rn:iddle-class response. The same with the trial. We challenged the court process by freaking, but when the reality of the of power we are against, came out of that game, we began to feel really threatened and unprotected by our armour of educated wordgames - they will only stretch so far.

Realising that we are privileged when we met women in Holloway who are much more the Victims... one girl in there for 2 weeks on remand for being in possession of a stolen license... but then there's a women this week in the papers, on homicide, for pushing a dummy down her own child's throat, because a whining husband was demanding his supper, and she not being able to cope.... Miss World, was a drop in the ocean....

The plea was an understatement, saying daddy was inadequate to judge as a man, when we realised he wasn't a human being, he was/is merely a TOOL. As Daddy he was comparatively harmless. A Wet liberal merely being Masculine and pompous. But he revealed himself often as the capitalist pawn and finally exposed himself as a TOOL of a powerful oppressive capitalist and imperalist Way of Life, whose liberal laws as applied mean separation and repression... DEATH AND DIVISION... AND ARE...

IRRELEVANT TO LIFE
BECAUSE we know and have felt the strength that the
JOY OF THE STRUGGLE IS IN THE CREATING.
OUT OF THE COURT - INTO THE STREETS

"Beauty and the Bovver Girls"

The MW [Miss World] demonstration was conceived as a propaganda action. We calculated that groups of girls emerging from the gloom of the auditorium waving football rattles, hurling "weapons", shouting slogans, and being dragged out would create enough of a counter-spectacle to disrupt the show.

As predicted, the media encouraged by Bob Hope's hysterical reaction, moved in - the screens of 7 million viewers erupted with streamers, leaflets and chaos several minutes and the following day we were splashed all over the front pages of the popular press. We had indeed drawn attention to ourselves, but we had disastrously underestimated the ability of the press to 'interpret' events. The pre-contest planning meetings had unanimously rejected the use of any slogan or action that could possibly be contrued as an attack on the contestants, or that might lead us to any violent confrontation. So we were naive enough to assume that although reaction might be hostile, the important issues would clearly emerge and other women would understand what we were doing. This was a miscalculation.

It was Bob Hope's impression of us as ugly bomb-throwing drug-addicts that received generous coverage.

Our purpose in demonstrating and the politics of the WL movement were entirely ignored. Instead the focus was placed on our freakish personalities: our connections with left-wing extremisim, etc. etc. We had made, it seemed yet another contribution to the bra-burning, man-hating horror image of WL.

As the trial escalated into police horrassment of witnesses, suppression of the defence and intimidation of the defendents, publicity continued, undirected by us, and developed into a smear campaign. ”We're not beautiful, we're not ugly, we're angry" read one of our leaflets. The Special Branch led by Det. Chief Sup Habershon apparently under heavy pressure from the government, jumped to the conclusion that there must be some connection between the WL a the Angry Brigade. This (desperate) speculation on the part of the Special Branch had the full support of the capitalist press: "FORD BOMB: WOMEN'S LIB QUIZ BY POLICE" (Evening News 20.3.71) "ANGRY BRIGADE WOOS WOMEN MILITANTS" (Evening Standard)

The reality was rather more prosaic. We were neither vengeful harridans embittered by the sight of a pretty face, nor a tightly knit terrorist unit. Few of us had any previous political experience most of us met for the first time over the demonstration. Some came from different WL groups up and down the country, others were on their own. We did anticipate the possibility of some police intervention. What we did not anticipate was the scale of confrontation with the forces of the state that the Miss World action unleashed. Events overtook us, and we found ourselves in a situation where it was difficult if not impossible to resist media manipulation and distortion.

The fact that about 100 girls demonstrated was almost immediately forgotten by the press. Interest focused - at least until the link-up with the Angry Brigade - exclusively on the 5 defendents. Our immediate reaction was alarm; we felt isolated, over-exposed, and even faintly ridiculous. Once the first shock of arrest etc. had died down, all our time and energy was spent on the trial. If a journalist approached us , they were rapidly passed on to someone else. As a result only the most persistent were given interviews and WL lost a crucial opportunity for communication.

This lack of positive strategy towards the media revealed the confusion and ambiguity that surrounded the Miss World action. There was an irresolvable contradition in its conception. On the one hand because the contest was an Ideological target, the intention of the demonstration was propaganda by deed, i.e, we were not deliberately recruiting, but we were attempting to make our politics and ideas accessible to other women. On the other hand we were firmly against any co-operation with the bourgeois media. There is something self-defeating in the politics of a movement which is prepared to burst unto the screens of 7 million viewers one minute, but withdraw the next into a jealously guarded privacy.

To ordinary women this implies that WL is an exclusive and secret sect - something esoteric, nothing to do with their lives women when in fact our slogan exhorts all women to unite. Of course it would be foolish not to be sceptical of the capitalist media. Its function is to reproduce the ideological mystification which capitalism needs. Sexist ideology is a major component of this mystification. The media therefore must combat WL, which, by challenging sexism threatens the precarious ideological stability on which capitalism is based.

Nevertheless at this stage in the struggle we are still far from from having our own channels of mass communication; the left-wing press has only a small circulation and anyway is generally suspicious of radical feminism; and the underground press is at best confused, at worst blatantly sexist, Most women therefore only hear of our existence through telly interviews and articles in the popular press. In this context, it is important to realise that because women's liberation is newsworthy it will be discussed with or without our participation. Whether an action such as Miss World is a priority for the WL movement, may still be questioned, what is certain however, is that such action is useless as means of propaganda unless it is supported by a campaign which explains the issues involved. Propaganda by deed is not enough.
ether an action such as movement, may still be questio-that such action is useless as supported by a campaign which ,a by deed, is not enough.

Why Miss World?

This Miss World action and the trial which followed was the first militant confrontation with the law by women since the suffragettes. It is over 60 years since Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst received 3 and 7 days in Strangeways for addressing the crowd outside a meeting of the liberal candidate Winston Churchill, in Manchester. Previously they had been roughly thrown out of the hall for causing a disturbance when they asked the platform for a statement of its position on the question of votes for women.

This first illegal actio of the suffragettes was followed 3 years later in 1908 by the celebrated trial of Mrs Pankhurst, her daughter Christabel, and Mrs Fiona Drummond. They appeared at Bow Street charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace and received 2 and 3 month sentences. The witnesses included Lloyd George and Herbert Gladstone, whom they had subpoened. The Pankhursts conducted their own defence. Their cross-examination of witnesses, the speeches they made in court, amounted to a brilliant exposure of male prejudice and the legal system. In the course of the trial we re-discovered the political importance of self-defence, both as a means of defending our self-respect and as a means of consciously rejecting the image of female acquiescence. Self-defence is a public demonstration of our refusal to collude in our own repression. It is an expression of the politics of women's liberation.

The suffragettes didn't have to be taken seriously until their demand for the vote was linked with the unemployed agitation 1908/9, the syndicalist inspired industrial militancy in the years 1910-13, the uprise of Irish nationalism.

Now the women's liberation movement is part o the growing revolutionary movement in England, as the state shows inereasing willingness to show force in varying degrees: against the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, militant sectors of the working class, the black community, militant homosexuals and the remnants of the student movement. Radical feminism is opening out the the increasing revolutionary struggle into new areas - we want control not only of the means of production but over the means of reproduction as well - which is why we are organising around abortion, contraception and childcare, questioning our sexual conditioning, changing the family structure, fighting institutions, publications and programmes that maintain women's oppression and promote the traditional submissive female.

We are invading the public world with the private one - bringing our isolation and repression out into the open - showing they have root in the political structure, not in our individual inability to cope.

After Miss World

All the excitement, the release of action, joy In our strength, ended with the first remand. Everyone went home for Christmas.

We fell deeper than ever into nightmare isolation - there was no womens movement, nothing to do, just the terror of waking up in the morning with nothing to look forward to...

The Miss World action was a reaction against humiliation, powerlessness. It wasn't part of a plan - we hadn't worked out clearly where our oppresion comes from, how the system runs on it, why we are used, how we can change it. So there was nothing to fall back on. As far as we could see the demonstration had had no effect. (In fact, the womens workshop membership doubled in the month after and a year later women were still talking about it as something that started them thinking about their oppression.)

For us, out of that vacuum, despair, we began to build ways of acting together which will make a movement over years instead of flash and disappear. We've worked more in the communities we live in, fighting for nurseries, playhouses for our kids, working with unsupported mothers in Claimants' Unions, meeting in small groups. Some of us have tried to live in collectives, some have worked with GLF. Most of it has been slow, painstaking organising compared with the Miss World demonstration - but it's in the home around kids, sexuality that our oppression bites deepest, holds hardest.